Rant

Rants .....

Ugly indeed

d = """@christophergandrud, C. Jason Liang, Clay Ford, @cornelius1729, @cplouffe, Craig Citro, @crossfitAL, @crowding, @crtahlin, Crt Ahlin, @cscheid, @csgillespie, @cusanovich, @cwarden, @cwickham, Daniel Lee, @darrkj, @Dasonk, David Hajage, David LeBauer, @dchudz, dennis feehan, @dfeehan, Dirk Eddelbuettel, @dkahle, @dlebauer, @dlschweizer, @dmontaner, @dougmitarotonda, @dpatschke, @duncandonutz, @EdFineOKL, @EDiLD, @eipi10, @elegrand, @EmilRehnberg, Eric C. Anderson, @etb, @fabian-s, Facundo Muñoz, @flammy0530"""

print( unlist(strsplit(d,", "))[ grep( "^@",unlist(strsplit(d,", ") )) ] )

or

d2 = unlist(strsplit(d,", ")

print( d2[ grep( "^@",d2 )) ] )

 [1] "@christophergandrud" "@cornelius1729"      "@cplouffe"          

 [4] "@crossfitAL"         "@crowding"           "@crtahlin"          

 [7] "@cscheid"            "@csgillespie"        "@cusanovich"        

[10] "@cwarden"            "@cwickham"           "@darrkj"            

[13] "@Dasonk"             "@dchudz"             "@dfeehan"           

[16] "@dkahle"             "@dlebauer"           "@dlschweizer"       

[19] "@dmontaner"          "@dougmitarotonda"    "@dpatschke"         

[22] "@duncandonutz"       "@EdFineOKL"          "@EDiLD"             

[25] "@eipi10"             "@elegrand"           "@EmilRehnberg"      

[28] "@etb"                "@fabian-s"           "@flammy0530"        

Pythonish....

print([ i for i in d.split(", ") if i.startswith("@") ])

['@christophergandrud', '@cornelius1729', '@cplouffe', '@crossfitAL', '@crowding', '@crtahlin', '@cscheid', '@csgillespie', '@cusanovich', '@cwarden', '@cwickham', '@darrkj', '@Dasonk', '@dchudz', '@dfeehan', '@dkahle', '@dlebauer', '@dlschweizer', '@dmontaner', '@dougmitarotonda', '@dpatschke', '@duncandonutz', '@EdFineOKL', '@EDiLD', '@eipi10', '@elegrand', '@EmilRehnberg', '@etb', '@fabian-s', '@flammy0530']